I forget which came first, Friends or the Disney Princesses Duplo line, but at some point I said to myself, "Self, it's just a matter of time before there's a Disney Friends line." Lo and behold, here we are with some pictures of LEGO Disney Princesses. There are six initial sets to be had with what I can only assume is a release date of January 2014. Cinderella and Ariel have doubled up, but we do get newcomers Merida and Rapunzel each with one set. And if Rapunzel doesn't have some sort of new, super-long hair element I'm crying foul.

I think I'm more excited about these sets than any of the of the other previews or leaks that have popped up. Now to convince my wife I need to buy two of each one... one for me, one for my daughter...

Brainslugged wrote:Not totally sure about the new swirly 1x1 studs though. I don't think Lego needs another element with which they can pad out the piece count.

It might kind of inflate the piece count, but at the same time I can see so many great possibilities-I am totally going to try a microscale Kremlin when I get my hands on these.

Otherwise, these princess sets, particularly the two for Cinderella, look to be my favorites so far for 2014 (besides the Parisian Restaurant): decent model designs that are more original than the current Castle line, and loads of great new parts and elements.

Ooooh! So many purple slopes and pieces! I can see my Evangelion coming together next year! Lol on mini kremlin. Who knew that Ariel lived on Utapau though? She's got the grass there. Or wait, was that the Salami sounding planet i'm thinking of? The speederbike set, regardless.

Curious...most licensed LEGO sets incorporate a notion of conflict, good guy vs. bad guy, and anything themed police, City Police, Space Police, does the same, as do the fantasy sets, like Ninjago or Chima.

Didn't notice until today, after watching the Maleficent movie trailer (starring Angelina Jolie) that these sets, and most (all?) Friends sets don't have that same sense of outright conflict.

Instead, these employ a more sophisticated presentation of conflict. Any set with a male character, like the Eric vs. Ariel set or the Flynn vs. Rapunzel set will help the young girls come to terms with their parent's constant bickering and sniping, and through play, work through the trauma that comes from watching Mom and Dad suck the life from each other.

Apologies for that last paragraph, I originally was going to write that it would be cool to get some villains, but my mind wandered. We'll have to rely on AFOLs to make something like Maleficent in dragon form.